Life cycle assessment of textile façades, beyond the current cladding systems.

Textiles are recently applied as façade cladding systems in new constructions as well as in retrofitting practices of existing buildings. The external vertical cladding market is characterized by several systems based on a wide range of cladding panels, offering cost-effective and attractive solutions. However, the increasing importance given today to the environmental compatibility leads designers to combine both the use of energy efficient materials and the technical solutions that try to maximize material savings. In this framework the paper focuses on some types of translucent cladding systems, in order to analyze their building techniques and the ratio between the “lightness” of the cladding layers and the fixing systems on the building walls. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment of the environmental impacts between three lightweight textile facade systems and two main common translucent systems currently on the market (U-Glass and Polycarbonate), designed for the retrofitting project of a social housing building placed in Milan, has been carried out. The objective of the paper is to debate on the potentials and limits of the textile façade systems and to suggest critical hitches, on which the manufacturing companies should work, and the designers should think during the envelope and façade modularity design, to improve the benefits of the use of lightweight membranes as a new kind of free-form façade, overcoming the current cladding modularity and optimizing the ratio between fabric panels and supporting elements